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Vostok: Story 1

In 2014 we started working on projects for Vostok Bank, and in 2015 we helped the bank to relaunch online banking, an evolving project which we have regularly upgraded to suit the needs of bank customers.

We continue to add new functions and develop the product by reviewing the reactions of customers who use the product and their suggestions.

Enrolment & My Money

Payments & Services

Activity feed

P2P Payments Evolution

PFM

In this part of the project we will focus on all of the particulars that are too often neglected when designing and initiating online banking.

What we did

Business concept development

UX/Visual design

Front-end implementation

Integration with Bank’s business logic

Customer enrolment and registration

At first sight, it appears that a mountain of work lies ahead. Then, once the project gets underway, a vast number of minuscule details come into focus. The majority of them concern a bank customer’s interaction with the product at every stage.

And there are others. It is not possible to find a solution that always works best and suits every situation.

Here is a short list of features we consider to be the most relevant

Considering the project as a whole, it becomes clear that the registration and enrolment procedure has to be examined laterally along with many special features. These include:

Customer convenience

General appearance

Security concerns

Technical considerations of the bank’s hardware

Legal matters

Online sign-up

A bank customer should be able to register to use a product/service without having to make extra visits to the bank. Even phone calls should be unnecessary.

Filling form experience

While filling in the form, help texts and screen prompts should show the customer what sort of information is requested, how it should be entered, what specifics it should include and what sort of responses would be incorrect or irrelevant. In such a way the customer is given to understand that filling in the form is not an exercise in futility and that the bank actually will process the entered information.

Security explained

From the security perspective, the bank’s system should, to as great a degree as possible, direct the customer towards choosing a secure password.

Avoiding mistakes

Convenience and ease of use always stand directly alongside security issues. Seeing entered symbols in the password margin can help the user to avoid frustration in those instances when the password temporarily slips from the memory. Also, when doing several things at the same time, users might not always be sure whether they have already entered the password.

Online security protection...

The customer is not expected to be a security specialist. That’s why the product must be readily understandable and explain particular steps.

...and offline as well

No matter what, the interface is the product essential which communicates with the user; the interface must support the user by answering questions.

“My Money” section

Cards

Today’s prevalent bank cards. As a physical object, a bank card is a wallet-sized piece of plastic connecting the centuries-old concept of money with its actual existence in one’s bank account. Here we use the visual metaphor of an accumulation of online-bank cards in a wallet very much as they might appear and be used in real life.

Instant actions

Bank customers differ widely. Some have only a single bank card, others might have just a couple, and still others who may have done business with a bank for many years possess a dozen or more bank cards (yes, there truly are such bank customers).

This is one of the reasons why there can’t be a universally appropriate solution to every possible situation, one that applies to every single customer. Banks must keep in mind that their customers are simply very diverse in every respect.

Amounts visualised

As a result, a truly accurate response under the simple subheading ‘Balance’ or ‘Remainder in the account’ or merely ‘How much money is there?’ can’t be provided without calculation. In the split second before providing the answer, a number of technically unavoidable calculations are performed. These include blocked funds, certain prearrangements with the card holder and such customer inconveniences (or banking realities) as overdrafts.

List filters

No matter where the account is located, when the question deals with the subject of the bank card or the account, every bank customer must always be able to find the answer predictably and in the exact place where they would expect it to be. This is the only coherent approach when marketing some of the more complicated bank products. Despite their complexity, they can generate excellent user experience.

Layout

Visualisation. Action. Additional information. These steps always proceed according to the template engineered for a section’s internal pages, which must be grouped according to the essential information contained in them and divided accordingly.

Name things

It frequently happens that the catchy names which a bank gives to a client’s deposits are intelligible only to those who have dreamt them up. As a rule, this means the bank’s marketing staff. On the other hand, should a customer wish to call his or her card ‘For earnings’, all’s well and good. There certainly exists the instrument to do this.

Eliminating the necessity for a customer to visit or ring up the bank ought to be one of the major aims of an efficient online banking system. This means that the customer should be given all the tools required to achieve simple objectives.

For example, the need to change a pin-code might not arise too often, but when it does, a bank customer shouldn’t have to expend undue effort to perform so minor a task.